The Buried Giant

Kazuo Ishiguro

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro transports us to Britain shortly after the death of King Arthur. Although the war between the Saxons and the Britons is over, peace is tenuous. Against a backdrop of festering tensions, an elderly couple, Axl and Beatrice, decide to go on a quest to seek their lost son. As they slowly make their way toward their son’s village, they encounter ogres, crones, a warrior, a young boy with a mysterious bite mark, Sir Gawain of King Arthur’s court, pixies, monks who want to kill them, monks who want to save them, mythical creatures, and a boatman who intentionally separates couples by ferrying only one partner to an island while leaving the other partner stranded.

To complicate matters further, a mist is ever-present throughout the land, causing people to suffer from collective amnesia. Axl and Beatrice struggle to remember their past, recollecting bits and pieces as they trudge along. They detour along the way, either because they seek help from a wise elder or because they want to assist others in need of help. Eventually they get embroiled in the search for Querig, a mysterious dragon that ostensibly terrorizes the land.

Ishiguro has written a masterpiece in which fable, allegory, and magical realism intersect. The novel has received mixed reviews, some of which were critical of the style, content, and characterization. But if the characters seem detached, removed, and unengaged, it is because they are characters in a fable. If the language seems archaic, pedantic, and overly-polite, it is because it has to be distanced from every day speech. We are immersed in a land replete with mythical creatures and monsters, knights in armor, an elderly couple on a quest, and mysterious happenings all of which are shrouded in a mist of forgetfulness. But this isn’t a novel about pre-Saxon England. The setting, characters, and plot are vehicles to engage us with the theme of the novel—a meditation on memory. 

The recurring thread weaving its way throughout the novel is about memory, the buried giant of the title. What do we remember and what, if anything, is best forgotten? On a personal level, can love between two people endure when memories of grievances, abandonment, and infidelities intrude? And on a collective level, can there be peace between two former warring factions when memories of atrocities, brutalities, and genocide inflicted by both sides continue to haunt? At what price do we remember? Do we have to confront the good and the bad in order to heal? Is it better to suppress all memories, in essence to bury the giant, in order to forget injustices? Or is it better to remember injustices of the past and risk getting caught up in the thirst for revenge? The characters grapple with these questions and, by extension, invite us to do the same.

Ishiguro gradually builds meaning as the narrative unfolds. The language is mesmerizing; the world he creates blends history with mythology with fantasy. This is a fable that raises profound questions about the efficacy of personal and collective memories and their role in healing and reconciliation—questions as relevant today as they were in the past.

Highly recommended

The Moor's Account

Laila Lalami

The Moor’s Account by Laila Lalami is a fictional account loosely based on the 1527 expedition from Spain to Florida of conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez. The goal was to conquer land, claim it for Spain, subdue the indigenous population, and find gold. The story is told in the voice of one of the four survivors of the expedition, Mustafa/Estebanico, a Moroccan who sold himself into slavery to provide for his destitute mother and siblings.

The first part of the novel consists of chapters in the alternating time lines of Mustafa’s life before and after the expedition. Mustafa recounts his childhood, his early success as a merchant, the death of his father, the famine that compelled him to provide funds for his family by selling himself into slavery, and his early life as a slave in the home of a Spanish merchant. These chapters alternate with his journey to Florida and experiences in America as a slave to the explorer Andres Dorantes who joined the Narváez expedition. Of the 600 people on the expedition, Mustafa and three Castilians were the only survivors.

Mustafa, renamed Estebanico by the Castilians, describes the harrowing journey across the ocean and on land. The expedition experiences one disaster and disappointment after another. Men are lost to disease, betrayals, ambushes, drownings, and bloody skirmishes with various Indian tribes. The few who survive do so by accommodating to the demands of the tribes they encounter and by learning survival skills from their hosts. The four survivors spend several years moving from one location to the next while developing a reputation as healers. Eventually Estebanico orchestrates his escape and returns with his Indian wife to her village to live out the rest of his days in peace.

Lalami brings events alive through the voice of her narrator. She skillfully transports us to a different time and place. We witness harrowing tales of survival, brutality, torture, cannibalism, as well as tales of compassion and generosity. Mustafa/Estebanico is an engaging story-teller who demonstrates tact, resilience, intelligence, adaptability, and impressive survival skills. We follow him as he encounters strange surroundings, animals, and people. And we watch as he learns to adapt and embrace his new life. But Estebanico is not without his faults since he traded in slaves before becoming a slave. Lalami depicts her characters as multi-dimensional, unique individuals with idiosyncrasies and foibles keenly observed by her narrator. The three Castilian survivors are well-rounded and believable, each with a different personality, and each of whom experiences growth.

The novel tackles the themes of slavery, colonialism, othering, greed, freedom, sacrifice, and family. Perhaps the most prominent theme to emerge is the power of story-telling. Mustafa/Estebanico discovers the great power that resides in story-telling—who is telling the story, whose voices are being silenced as a consequence, and who has agency to reshape the story to suit his purposes. As his adventures in the New World unfold, Estebanico’s voice gradually gains in strength and with it comes a corresponding increase in agency. His stated purpose is to provide an honest recording of events to correct the erroneous report compiled by the three Castilian survivors. Mustafa/Estebanico’s voice, which had once been silenced during his tenure as a slave, will be silent no more.

A convincing and laudable reimagining of events. Highly recommended.

Reflections in a Golden Eye

Carson McCullers

Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers takes place on an army base in the American South in the 1930s. It focuses on five characters, each of whom is dysfunctional in one way or another.

Although we are told at the outset of the novel that a murder will take place, we are not yet told who or why or how. Instead, we are introduced to the characters. There is the young Private Ellgee Williams who seems to suffer from a learning disability. Captain Penderton struggles with his sexuality, finding himself developing an obsession for Private Williams. Penderton’s wife, Leonora, is having an affair with their neighbor, Major Morris Langdon. Penderton has knowledge of his wife’s affairs, and although he feels nothing but loathing for his wife, we are told he finds himself attracted to her lovers. Alison, Langdon’s wife, also has knowledge of the affair. She suffers from a weak heart, is fragile both physically and mentally, and executes a fit of self-mutilation due to her frustration. Into this mix is Alison Langdon’s confidante and soul-mate, Anacleto, the gay Filipino house boy. The events gradually unfold, revealing the nature and extent of each character’s dysfunction.

After catching a glimpse of Leonora prancing about in the nude in her home, Private Williams develops an obsession for her and sneaks into her bedroom at night on several occasions to watch her sleep. Penderton’s obsession with Private Williams reaches such proportions that he begins to stalk him and wanders into areas where he knows he will encounter him. Leonora also has some sort of learning disability since we are told she finds simple addition of numbers and/or letter writing as overwhelming challenges. Major Langdon resents his wife’s bond with Anacleto and is convinced his wife is faking her illness. He displays a boorish insensitivity to his wife’s grief over the loss of their child. Alison Langdon is, perhaps, the most sympathetic of the characters in that she suffers her husband’s infidelity, is plagued with a weak heart, and is totally estranged from her husband. Her despair with life reaches a climax when she mutilates her body.

None of the characters are particularly endearing. McCullers’ skill lies in the gradual revelation of the full nature of each character’s dysfunction. The details pile up with restraint, dropping a hint here, a sentence there until the climactic conclusion. What emerges is a portrait of five very lonely, out of joint characters who muffle their pain with alcohol and sleeping pills. McCullers captures their hurts, sadness, loneliness, and festering resentments—all of which they bury under a veneer of respectability and social acceptance. She handles this with precision, detachment, and an acute eye for observing the frailties that make us human.

Recommended.

Elmet

Fiona Mozley

A finalist for the 2017 Man Booker Prize, Fiona Mozley’s Elmet is a haunting book that continues to linger long after the final word has been read. What makes this such an impressive novel is Mozley’s ability to generate and sustain an atmosphere of impending catastrophe.

The narrative is straightforward. A father and his two children, fourteen-year-old Daniel and fifteen-year-old Cathy, build a home on land that previously belonged to the children’s mother. They are self-sufficient and depend on each other to build their home and grow their own food. They limit their interactions with outsiders. The father is a burly giant who made a living as a prize-fighter. He is protective over his children, treats them with kindness, teaches them the survival skills of animal trapping and foraging, all the while instilling in them a respect for nature. The mother is absent, appearing intermittently in the children’s lives before finally disappearing for good. It is after her last disappearance and the death of their grandmother that the father decides to relocate and build the home for his children.

The lifestyle sounds idyllic in many ways. But from the beginning, Mozley establishes a foreboding atmosphere that intensifies as the novel progresses. The mother’s previous appearances, disappearances, and final exit are never fully explained. The father sometimes vanishes for several hours at a time without informing his children of his whereabouts or activities. Young Daniel seems to be struggling with his sexuality. He has the homemaker instinct, assuming the responsibility for cooking, cleaning, and decorating the home to create a welcoming environment. Cathy exudes a toughness and staunch determination. Plagued with the anxieties and frustrations of her physical maturity, she is fiercely protective of her brother and views outsiders with suspicion.

Into this environment intrudes a wealthy and powerful landlord who accuses the family of squatting on his land. He has the paper work to prove it, claiming he purchased the land from their mother when she needed money. The clash escalates into a class conflict with landowner versus tenants, business owner versus laborers. The situation rapidly deteriorates, going from bad to worse until the final climactic and bloody crescendo.

Although the novel has its strengths, it also has a few noteworthy weaknesses. The story is told from the first-person point of view of Daniel. But there is an incongruity between the internal thoughts and fluidity of his narrative voice with his outward speech. Daniel’s interiority is relatively sophisticated, profound, reflective, and mature—qualities not evident in his actual speech, which is child-like and naïve. The problem is compounded by Mozley’s attempts to capture the dialect and inflections of the north of England. We are thrust from the sensuous and vivid description of the surroundings into a speech in which doendt substitutes for doesn’t, wan’t owt substitutes for wasn’t anything, and so on. Rather than sounding authentic, these attempts at capturing the Yorkshire dialect seem contrived and jarring. The climax of the novel stretches plausibility, and too many loose ends, relationships, possible connections, and mysteries hinted at throughout the novel are never adequately resolved.

These lapses do not detract from Mozley’s talent and achievement in this her debut novel as there is much in it to admire. The writing is beautiful and has a rhythmic, lyrical quality. Mozley’s descriptive and vivid language captures the sights, sounds, and smells of the landscape in rural Yorkshire. Her main strength, however, lies in generating a strong sense of atmosphere, an atmosphere that permeates the novel, gradually intensifying to its inexorable conclusion.

A compelling page-turner in many ways. Highly recommended.

Omeros

Derek Walcott

Omeros (the Greek name for Homer) by Derek Walcott is a challenging, multi-layered epic poem in seven books. Although the poem does not retell Homer’s works, it does feature characters in the Iliad and Odyssey and is replete with references to Greek mythology. Several seemingly disparate narrative threads intersect in the poem. Weaving in and out of these different threads is the author’s reflections on his life and his commentary on the damaging effects of colonialism on the indigenous populations of the Caribbean, Africa, and North America.

The primary thread is set in the Caribbean island of St. Lucia and involves fishermen and other sundry characters populating the island—Achille, Hector, Helen, Philoctete, Seven Seas (a blind poet), Ma Kilman (the healer), and Major Plunkett and his wife Maud, among others. The characters sometimes merge with their Homeric counterparts. Within its seemingly haphazard framework, the poet leaps backward and forward in time, changes locations from the island to cities in Europe and North America, frequently interjects himself as a traveler in and out of time and place, and converses with Homer in the final section of the book. All these shifts occur without alerting the reader, so one frequently has to reread passages to determine the location, the timeframe, and the characters involved in any segment.

The poem is complex. It can be confusing at times to follow a narrative thread with its unannounced shifts that pull in any given direction. However, the narrative is not what necessarily draws in the reader. Instead, what draws the reader in and what makes this a spellbinding work of literature is the sheer beauty of the poetry in lines that have to be savored as they twirl around the tongue, lines that reflect the immense talent of the mind that produced them.

In Omeros, Derek Walcott, the 1992 recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, gave us a poem with characters drawn with sympathy and compassion. He showed us their struggles, their triumphs, and their defeats. He transported us to their island, an island rich with color and vegetation and with the sights and sounds of the ocean as a constant presence. And he does this while illustrating the debilitating impact of colonialism on the traditions and culture of the indigenous population. Above all, Walcott gave us rhythmic lines of poetry in language that is musical, vibrant, resonant, stunningly beautiful, and replete with images and metaphors shimmering with color.

A challenging poem to read but well worth the effort. Highly recommended.

My Soul is a Woman: The Feminine in Islam

Annemarie Schimmel

My Soul is a Woman: The Feminine in Islam by Annemarie Schimmel explores the role of women and the feminine in the mystical tradition of Islam (Sufism).

Schimmel was an internationally renowned scholar who wrote extensively on Islam and mysticism. Fluent in several languages, including German, English, Urdu, Persian, Arabic, and Turkish, she was a professor of theology at Ankara University for several years before moving to Harvard where she inaugurated the Indo-Muslim Studies program. She was a prolific writer, publishing numerous books and articles on Islamic literature and mysticism.

In My Soul is a Woman, Schimmel dedicates a chapter on the role women played in each of the following topics: women and the Prophet of Islam; in Sufism; in the Qur’an and Islamic traditions; and in the education of the soul since “soul” (nafs) is a feminine word in Arabic. She also explores the respect paid to elderly women and mothers in the Islamic tradition.

Schimmel provides copious examples of the significant contributions made by a number of female mystics to Islamic mysticism. She carefully distinguishes between the role and expectations placed on women in the Quran and the rigid restrictions and prohibitions placed on them in society, attributing the latter to misogynistic cultural influences which became increasingly intransigent throughout time and which deviate in significant ways from the Qur’an.  

One of the most fascinating aspects of the book is Schimmel’s exploration of a variety of Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and Indo-Muslim Sufi love poems. Schimmel reads these poems as metaphors for the beloved’s yearning for union with God. The beloved can be male or female. He/she goes on a quest to seek the beloved with an unwavering dedication that serves as a role model for other seekers. This interpretive lens opens the poems up to new readings in which every action, every step, can be read as a metaphor along the mystical path to God.

The book is recommended for those seeking an understanding of the role of women and the feminine in the mystical tradition of Islam.

No Time To Spare: Thinking About What Matters

Ursula K. Le Guin

No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters by Ursula K. Le Guin is a collection of blogs Le Guin wrote between the years of 2010-2016. The collection is selected and introduced by Karen Jay Fowler.

Le Guin’s topics are wide-ranging and include the following: her lack of spare time; the benefits and challenges of aging; the nature of writing; letters from children; Homer; literary awards and the great American novel; feminism; thoughts on Utopia and dystopia; capitalism; anger; her discomfort with public appearances; and the ideal way of eating a soft-boiled egg. Le Guin also ventures into the animal world by delighting us with the antics of her cat, Pard; her eyeball encounter with a rattle snake; and her meditations on a lynx.

Le Guin expresses her opinions with unabashed candor, articulates her concerns with the direction the world around her has taken, and communicates the wonders she finds in seemingly mundane conversations and encounters. Her language is informal, conversational, and laced with the occasional acerbic witticism. Even though the tone conjures up an atmosphere of sitting around the kitchen table and chatting, Le Guin’s words are not to be dismissed lightly. This is not a simple jaunt into the mind of an octogenarian. Her voice is authentic; her words full of wisdom and insights that give you pause and make you think. She segues seamlessly from one topic to another, from the seemingly trivial to the very profound. Her encounter with a rattlesnake, for example, is transformed into a meditation on the sacred.

The collection is full of gems taking unexpected turns and laced with a wry sense of humor. Le Guin’s mind is active, sensitive, compassionate, graceful, and unflinchingly honest. She compels us to confront hard truths. She will be sorely missed.

Highly recommended.

The Green Bicycle

Haifaa Al Mansour

The Green Bicycle by Haifaa Al Mansour is the story of Wadjda, a precocious and enterprising eleven-year-old girl in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Wadjda is a tom boy who refuses to conform to her culture’s expectations of what is considered appropriate behavior and mannerisms for girls. Her best friend and playmate is a young boy called Abdullah. When Wadjda sees a green bicycle in a toy store, she decides to earn the money to buy it so she can race with Abdullah. It is considered highly improper for girls to ride bicycles in Saudi Arabia, but Wadjda will not allow that obstacle to deter her.

Based on Al Mansour’s award-winning film, the novel explores gender roles and the restrictions placed on women in Saudi Arabia. It provides a glimpse of the education system for girls, dress requirements for females, and the limitations imposed on a woman’s movement and speech. Wadjda challenges these restrictions with every aspect of her being. Eventually, her mother gets on board and launches her own rebellion.

Al Mansour captures the struggles of life in Saudi Arabia and the social expectations and traditions that place a burden on both men and women—with women shouldering the heavier burden. Wadjda’s father takes on a second wife since only sons are recognized in the family tree and Wadjda’s mother can no longer bear children. Al Mansour is careful to distinguish between the cultural prohibitions placed on women and the precepts of Islam, attributing prohibitions to tradition and dismissing many as superstitious in nature. For example, Wadjda is repeatedly warned that riding a bicycle will inhibit her ability to bear children—an admonition she dismisses as mere superstition.

Wadjda’s relationship with her mother is heartwarming and handled with sensitivity. Their bond is unbreakable, infused with love and understanding. One of the most touching scenes is of Wadjda’s mother teaching Wadjda to recite verses from the Qur’an. Wadjda is moved by her mother’s sonorous voice as she delivers the words with passion:

Gently, she clasped Wadjda’s hands in hers and placed their joined palms, fingers interlaced, over her own heart. Words spilled from her mouth, full of a sincerity and passion Wadjda had never seen before. A passion her mother had, up until that point, kept locked inside.

The connection between mother and daughter is unwavering. As the mother says to Wadjda when her husband takes on a second wife, “It’s all right,” she said softly. “He made his decision. It’ll be just the two of us now. We’ll be fine.”

And you know they will.

Recommended for children ages eleven and up—and for those young at heart.

Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is an unsettling novel that grabs the reader with a relentless grip from its first page to its last. Told from the first-person point of view of a naïve and unreliable narrator, the novel unfolds in a series of flashbacks and flash forwards. The narrator, Kathy H, an adult in her early thirties when the novel opens, remembers her childhood and schooling at Hailsham, followed by her years in “the cottage,” and then as a caregiver to donors. 

Initially, Hailsham sounds like an idyllic school in the English countryside, isolated from the hustle and bustle of the rest of the world. Kathy is surrounded by friends and guardians who oversee the children’s education, artistic endeavors, and sports activities. But slowly seeping into this atmosphere are hints of something ominous: references to the children as “special,” furtive glances, partial revelations, and bits of overheard conversations. Kathy narrates these activities and snatches of conversation but seems completely oblivious to their import at the time. This makes it even more haunting since the reader is able to piece the puzzle together long before everything becomes apparent to the narrator. The tension builds up slowly with layer upon layer of hints and clues shared with the reader through the eyes of a child who doesn’t fully comprehend their significance.

Winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature, Kazuo Ishiguro has created an amazing tour de force. Through his use of first-person narrative, the reader experiences events through the eyes an innocent child who grows into adulthood. We feel sympathy for her and her friends as they try to make sense of an incomprehensible situation. We watch them as they clutch at straws and fabricate meanings to understand their circumstances. And we recoil in horror as we learn the purpose of their existence and the full extent of the cruel and inhumane experiment they have endured under the ostensible guise of scientific medical research.

This is not an easy read. Brilliant in its execution, the story is chilling, disturbing, and will continue to haunt long after the final sentence has been read.

Three Daughters of Eve

Elif Shafak

Three Daughters of Eve by Elif Shafak tells the story of a Turkish woman, Nazperi Nalbantoglu, known as Peri. The narrative shifts backwards and forwards in time, beginning with Peri as an adult wife and mother living in Istanbul in 2016, to her childhood growing up in Istanbul in the 1980s, to the time she spent as a student at Oxford University in 2000. 

Peri’s childhood is fraught with anxieties. Her favorite brother is arrested by Turkish authorities and serves time in a Turkish prison. He emerges from his ordeal as a changed man. Her mother and father fight incessantly over religion with each side becoming increasingly entrenched in his/her respective positions. To add further complication to her life, Peri is visited by a mysterious spirit in the form of a baby enshrouded in a mist of clouds. He appears and disappears at pivotal moments in her life.

During her stay at Oxford, Peri befriends Shirin, a non-observant Muslim from Tehran; and Mona, a devout Muslim from Egypt. Collectively, they are the three daughters of Eve. On the advice of Shirin, Peri enrolls in a seminar about God. The charismatic professor, Dr. Azur, employs an unconventional pedagogy in conducting the seminar—one that is designed to challenge his students. Unfortunately, he is also arrogant, manipulative, and doesn’t hesitate to exploit the vulnerabilities of his students to further his aims. He manipulates them like pawns on a chess board. Predictably, Peri becomes infatuated with him, an infatuation that soon turns to hostility when she learns of his affair with Shirin. The novel concludes where it began—Istanbul in 2016. Peri, hiding in a closet from gunmen who have invaded the house, phones Professor Azur and achieves a closure of sorts in her conversation with him.

Shafak sustains reader interest in the narrative with happenings that generate interest and shifts in time that are easy to follow. But the character portrayals are weak. While Peri is depicted as well-rounded, confused, and conflicted, the remaining characters emerge as venues or mouthpieces for different perspectives on religion, philosophy, and politics. They spout their views, presenting one side or another in a manner that feels obviously constructed. They talk at each other instead of to each other and are reduced to little more than mouthpieces for a particular point of view. As a result, the story suffers. And although the novel concludes with Peri presumably achieving an understanding of her experience at Oxford, that understanding wasn’t communicated effectively to provide satisfactory closure to the novel.

Recommended with reservations.

Elif Shafak’s The Architect’s Apprentice is a much stronger and more compelling novel and displays her talents to better advantage.

Saints for All Occasions

J. Courtney Sullivan

Saints for All Occasions by J. Courtney Sullivan is the story of two sisters from a small village in Ireland who emigrate to America. Their lives take different paths as the younger sister, Theresa, becomes pregnant and then joins a nunnery. Nora, the older sister marries, adopts her nephew, and raises him as her own child while concealing the identity of his birth mother. She has three other children. The sisters are estranged, maintaining an on and off relationship for decades until a possible reconciliation is suggested at the end of the novel when they are in their seventies.

The story is moderately interesting but the main flaws lie in the telling of it. Character portrayal is lackluster and, in the case of Nora’s lesbian daughter, borders on being stereotypical. The narrative consistently meanders into brief backstories that interrupt the general flow, giving the impression of distracting, unnecessary fillers.

Unfortunately, the novel was unable to live up to the promise of its engaging opening chapters.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Mary Roach

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach is at times informative, educational, interesting, humorous, and, at times, positively macabre.

Roach explores how the study of human cadavers has advanced the field of medical science and forensics, and how it has saved lives through improvements in car safety and in the protection of military personnel in combat zones. Each chapter contains a brief explanation of experiments performed by pioneers in the study of cadavers, explaining their contributions—or lack thereof. Roach also interviews individuals currently working with cadavers, including physicians who transplant organs, military personnel, embalmers, forensics experts whose task is to determine the time and nature of death, and injury analysts. She attends autopsies, transplant surgeries, and laboratories where experiments are performed. And through it all, she manages to pepper her discussion with a tongue-in-cheek humor without being disrespectful toward the subject of her inquiry.

Roach’s study was interesting and informative in many ways. Because scientists now know the rate and stages of decomposition of human remains, they can pinpoint the time and nature of death with accuracy. And through their study of human remains, injury analysts can determine the cause of a fatal plane crash. The differences between organ donation and donating your body to science are clarified, as are the procedures involved in embalming; cremation; the composting of human remains; and traditional burial.

Much has been learned through the study of cadavers. Obviously, it is preferable to experiment on cadavers rather than live humans in the interest of advancing knowledge. But one wonders whether it was necessary to describe experiments in such graphic, gruesome detail. Some of the experiments performed on animals were cruel and resulted in grotesque aberrations. And some experiments performed on human body parts made one recoil in horror. A case in point: the French physician who feverishly collected guillotined heads during the French revolution to determine if and for how long a head can survive after it has been severed from the human body. The chapter “Eat Me” was particularly grisly. Roach gives a historical overview of various bits and pieces of cadavers and human and animal bodily excretions ingested for medicinal purposes.

Although interesting and educational in many ways, this is not a book for everyone. Recommended but with reservations.

Memoirs of Hadrian

Marguerite Yourcenar; Trans. Grace Frick

Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar, translated from the French by Grace Frick, is a work of historical fiction. The narrative unfolds in the voice of the Roman Emperor Hadrian (76-138 CE) as he speaks to his adopted grandson and heir, Marcus Aurelius. The novel is a fascinating combination of autobiography, history, psychology, and philosophy. Hadrian offers valuable advice to his heir by meditating on the nature of good governance, and on how to live, love, and die well. He does it through the form of a story that recounts his rise to power; his struggles, failures, and successes as emperor; the monuments he erected and why he erected them; the genuine bonds he formed with servants who took care of him; his losses and his loves, especially the one true love of his life who died at the age of 20.

Hadrian emerges as a complex character, unafraid to take risks and to live life to the fullest. He implemented reforms, restored ancient sites that had fallen into ruin, built new sites and monuments, and felt more at home in the culture of Athens than that of Rome. He nurtured a strong appetite for art and literature and loved to contemplate the stars puncturing the night sky. He stabilized the borders of the Roman Empire and took great pains to establish procedures and codify reforms that would survive his death. Widely travelled, he derived pleasure from exposure to different lands and cultures, appreciating the diversity in all he saw. He recognized conquering a people through cultural assimilation is far more effective and enduring than a war that blankets their lands with bloody corpses.

Yourcenar conducted extensive research to piece together this narrative. Her Author’s Note at the back of the book, explains how she scoured texts—ancient and otherwise; read what has survived of Hadrian’s own words; and explored coinage, artifacts, and archeological sites. The depth and breadth of her research is impressive. She immersed herself in Hadrian so successfully that one can almost believe he speaks through her. The language is beautiful, the pace slow and contemplative, the meditations insightful. One of the qualities that make this work so appealing is Yourcenar’s achievement in capturing a voice for Hadrian that sounds so very authentic, intimate, and honest. It is almost as if the aging emperor, aware of his proximity to death, allows us to eavesdrop on his reflections. The effect is extraordinary.

This is a unique achievement—unlike any other work of historical fiction I have encountered. Highly recommended.

The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium

Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger

Pull back the curtains and take a peek at life in Anglo-Saxon England by reading The Year 1000: What Life was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium by Robert Lacey and Danny Danzinger. This is a delightful trip back in time. By piecing together interviews with an impressive number of scholars in the field and conducting extensive research as evidenced by their notes and bibliography, the authors provide a unique perspective on what life must have been like at the turn of the first millennium.

The organization of the book takes its cue from the Julius Work Calendar, the earliest surviving document of its sort, dated approximately 1020 CE. Divided into twelve months with a page for each month, this perpetual calendar chronicles the holy days and saints’ days to be celebrated during the month and offers a glimpse into the daily lives of Anglo-Saxons in the year 1000. Each month is adorned with a delightful illustration depicting the activity associated with that month, whether it be ploughing, harvesting, sheep-shearing, or performing a myriad of other activities.

Written in a style that is engaging and accessible, the book is full of fascinating little tidbits of information and curious facts about the lives, habits, clothing, homes, and activities of Anglo-Saxons. The details allow us to peek into the lives of Anglo-Saxon villagers—from the texture of their coarse, woolen clothing, to the fleas infesting their beds, to the stench of open sewers, to the back-breaking labor as they worked the land. Life at the turn of the first millennium certainly had its challenges. People were totally dependent on nature and dated their lives by years when weather and land failed to cooperate. July, known as ‘the hungry gap,’ was the hardest month on the poor since spring crops had not yet matured and grain bins were probably empty.

In spite of these challenges, however, life in Anglo Saxon England had a charm all its own. Imagine living according to the rhythms of nature. Imagine stepping outside your home and not being accosted by sounds of machines in the air or on the ground, or cell phones buzzing for attention. Imagine the only sounds you hear are the rustling of leaves, the twitter of birds, the grunts and snorts of nearby animals, the chatter of a brook. Imagine living in a village with such a small population that you know everyone and everyone knows you—who you are and where you came from; the names of your parents, grandparents, and siblings; which animals belong to you and which belong to your neighbor. Imagine the strong sense of community that develops in such an environment. Imagine living in a place where surnames had not yet been invented because everyone really and truly does know your name.

Life in Anglo Saxon England certainly had its challenges. But thanks to the digestible and entertaining format of this well-researched historical glimpse of England, we recognize it also had its charms.

Highly recommended.

The Life of Poetry

Muriel Rukeyser

The Life of Poetry by Muriel Rukeyser is an exploration of poetry—its relationship to the visual and performing arts, its role in our personal lives and in the life of our culture.

Rukeyser begins her exploration by discussing the fear of poetry, a fear she attributes to all imaginative work for its ability to invite a total response reached through emotions. Convinced of the transformative power of poetry, Rukeyser argues the impact of poetry and the arts is to make us more compassionate and humane, linking us to our common humanity. She cites various poems, exploring the impact of and similarities between poetry and works in the visual and performing arts. Her vision is expansive.

Rukeyser peppers her discussion with references to poets, authors, philosophers, and scientists. She draws on events from her personal life and from her interactions with others. She argues all aspects of our culture are integrated, the only barriers being those that are artificially created. She promotes the view that even science and poetry are integrated—one bleeds into the other.

The originality of her thought is impressive. First published in 1949, so much of what she says is still relevant. But there were times when it was difficult to follow her train of thinking. The organization was choppy. She seemed to jump from one thought to another, from one reference to another, without making clear the connections or transitions. Perhaps this is reflective of so many thoughts and images and ideas bombarding her mind simultaneously that even though the connections are obvious to her, she is unable to communicate them adequately to the reader. In spite of some of these drawbacks, however, the work contained passages that were lucid, quotable, and truly inspirational.

Rukeyser defines the poem as “an exchange of energy,” as “process,” as one part of a dynamic triadic relationship between the poet and the reader. She redefines the reader as a “witness,” since the term “. . . includes the act of seeing or knowing by personal experience, as well as the act of giving evidence.” Her final chapters are particularly compelling. In language breathless with anticipation, she retraces her experience with the images and thoughts that went into the process of writing a poem. And bordering on lyricism is the chapter containing fleeting images of her childhood memories.

There are many quotable and inspiring passages in the work, including this passage that is perhaps one of the most salient:

The tendency of art and religion, and the tendency of poetic meaning, is toward the most human. It is a further humanity we are trying to achieve, at our most conscious, and to communicate.The thinning out of our response is the weakness that leads to mechanical aggression. It is the weakness turning us inward to devour our own humanity, and outward only to sell and kill nature and each other.

Words to savor. Words to remember. Words to live by.

Recommended.

The Golden Mean

Annabel Lyon

The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon is the story of the nearly seven years Aristotle spent as the tutor of Alexander, the son and heir of King Philip of Macedon. The narrative is told in Aristotle’s voice, opening with his arrival in Pella, the capital of Macedon. He is accompanied by his wife, Pythias, and his nephew, Callisthenes.

Aristotle’s initial task is to work with Philip’s mentally challenged son, Arrhidaeus. Although he treats Arrhidaeus with compassion and helps him improve both his physical and mental agility, it is Arrhidaeus’ younger brother, Alexander, who consumes Aristotle’s interest and becomes the focus of his attention.

Aristotle is portrayed as highly intelligent and with an unbounded curiosity of the natural world, including human anatomy. Even though the novel is told from his point of view, he remains somewhat aloof and impenetrable. He is subject to fits of depression and has a tendency to weep he knows not why. His conversations occasionally sound stilted and have the flavor of a lecture—as if he were nothing more than a mouthpiece for his ideas.

Alexander emerges as an inquisitive, petulant, arrogant, lonely, willful, ambitious, and brilliant young man, capable of performing atrocities both on and off the battlefield that horrify even his father. Aristotle struggles to reign him in, to teach him the self-control required to live within the gold mean. Their conversations assume the form of verbal sparring—challenging each other back and forth as they debate ideas without arriving at mutually satisfactory resolutions.

Lyon guides us through a period of history replete with examples of male dominance. Her prose is muscular, straightforward, and, for the most part, engaging. However, her frequent use of obscenities and modern phrasing was jarring and incongruous. Such language yanks readers out of historical time and place and thrusts them smack in the middle of contemporary terminology and contemporary cuss words. Their presence is gratuitous, detracts from the setting, and diminishes what would otherwise have been a more enjoyable read.

Man Tiger

Eka Kurniawan; Trans. Labodalih Sembiring

He brutally murders a neighbor by biting chunks out of his neck and jugular vein. When confronted, Margio calmly declares:

“It wasn’t me . . . There is a tiger inside my body.”

With those words, Eka Kurniawan introduces us to Margio, his young protagonist in Man Tiger. A white tigress possesses Margio’s body. This same white tigress possessed the body of his grandfather before he died. And if you find that difficult to believe, know that Mameh, Margio’s sister, witnesses the tiger exiting and entering her brother’s body and occasionally catches glimpses of the tiger’s eyes peering at her through her brother’s eyes.

The novel is set in a small Indonesian village where supernatural and fantastical happenings are woven into the fabric of everyday life and where belief in their existence is ubiquitous. The fantastical presents as a normal occurrence. Margio doesn’t question the existence of the tiger possessing his body. He only wants to learn how to control it.

We know Margio killed his neighbor. We know how he did it. But we have to wait until the end of the novel to find out why he did it. After the graphic and grisly description of the murder, Kurniawan takes us back in time where we learn about Margio and his family. There are constant shifts in time with flashbacks and flash forwards. Margio’s father is an abusive, vicious tyrant who beats his wife and children without restraint. Margio’s mother, once young, beautiful, and vibrant is now an empty, withered shell of her former self. She reacts to the trauma by withdrawing into herself, preferring to chat with pots and pans rather than with people. Margio spends much of his time trying to ease life for his brutally abused mother and fantasizing about murdering his father.

The novel is replete with examples of lack of restraint. A garden grows so abundantly that it resembles a jungle and consumes the outside of the house. A young girl ponders the possibility that there is an actual woman growing inside her, causing her body to fill out in ways she can’t control. The dead are apparently incapable of containment within their graves. The boundaries separating human from animal are blurred. Marital rape and domestic violence are socially sanctioned. Not even the neighbors intervene when they hear the screams of Margio’s mother as she is being raped, battered, and bruised. Their callous indifference to the atrocities makes them partially culpable for the ensuing savagery.

This is a highly imaginative and compelling read, but it is not without its flaws. The structure seems rambling and haphazard. The novel meanders down paths and back stories of characters, some of whom bear little significance to the main plot. The digressions are disconcerting because one is never quite sure of their relevance.

This is a story about the impact of poverty, desperation, and violence. It paints a vivid portrait of the exploitation and brutality inflicted on women and children. The portrayal of a young man who finally reaches a breaking point and allows the emergence of the tiger within to perpetrate a horrific act of retaliatory violence is profoundly illustrative. It serves as a cautionary tale of what can happen to a people pushed repeatedly to the brink of endurance without recourse or social support to alleviate their suffering. Blinded by their rage, they may eventually snap. The ensuing barbaric acts may be understandable because of the extent of their suffering. But that does not detract from the horror.

Recommended but with a word of caution because of its explicit rendering of sexual assault, domestic violence, exploitation of women, and the rampant brutality against women and children.

The Watch

Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya

In his novel The Watch, Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya transplants the story of Antigone to an isolated American outpost in a desert in Afghanistan.

The novel opens with Nizam, a young burqa-clad Afghan girl whose family was killed by an American drone as they were returning from a wedding. Although she survived the attack, Nizam lost both her legs. With makeshift bandages wrapped around her stumps, she drives a cart to the isolated American outpost to request her brother’s body for burial. As the lone survivor of her family, she is responsible for ensuring his burial according to her religious traditions.

She is told her brother was a Taliban insurgent and responsible for the recent attack on the outpost. She denies her brother was a Taliban and says his attack was retaliation for the death of her family by the Americans. She is told his body will not be returned to her. She insists it is her right to bury him. She is told to go home. She refuses to budge. She is offered food. She declines. She waits in her cart, fiercely determined to get her way. The young girl’s presence outside the camp thrusts the soldiers into an unsettling moral quandary. After all, there are no guidelines for handling a courageous, defiant young girl who doggedly insists on retrieving her brother’s body to give him a proper burial. And so begins a two-day standoff with both sides firmly entrenched in their positions.

Through a series of first person narratives, we circle back to the same event—Nizam’s arrival at the outpost—but each time we see it through a different set of lenses. The majority of voices are those of the American soldiers. The characters are believable and portrayed with sympathy. The dialogue is realistic. Each narrator is given a unique identity and struggles with personal demons. Some want to do the civilized thing, the humane thing. But all are depicted as pawns in a situation that is decidedly uncivilized and inhumane.

Roy-Bhattacharya gives us a haunting taste of life on the outpost. The personal narratives include the characters’ back stories and provide access to their thoughts. We witness their trauma as they are attacked by insurgents and lose some of their comrades. We feel their panic. We taste their fear of living on the edge with fingers ever-ready on the trigger. We are with them as they experience a sand storm so strong it invades their eyes, nose, ears, food, drinks, and the air they breathe while it reduces visibility to a bare minimum. We sense their frustration as they struggle to comprehend a situation that isn’t in the rule book. We hear their doubts about the war as they question their presence and the efficacy of their mission. We feel their exhaustion. We witness their snatches of sleep and dreams of back home. We awaken with them as they jolt back to a reality they would prefer to forget. We experience abrupt shifts in time as sights and sounds trigger memories of home and loved ones.

Roy-Bhattacharya does not take sides in the conflict. Instead, he lets those embroiled in its tentacles speak their reality. The result is a riveting anti-war novel that captures the essence of war in all its ubiquitous horror, insanity, and anguish. The image of a young, disabled girl in a cart, willing to risk death to honor her brother, haunts the soldiers as it does the reader. Although Nizam’s narrative is restricted to the opening chapter, her presence hovers over every page of the book, testifying to the horror of war and to the senseless destruction of human life.

In war, even the winners—if there are any—will lose.

Highly recommended, but because of its graphic language, its intense and emotionally-charged situations, this may not be for everyone.

The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War

Caroline Alexander

Caroline Alexander’s The War that Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer’s Iliad and the Trojan War is more than an exploration of Homer’s Iliad. Alexander’s interpretation of characters and events in the epic arrive at conclusions about the experience of war in general—conclusions that are applicable to all wars at all times and in all places.

Alexander encourages the drawing of parallels. She cites examples from 20th Century wars that echo sentiments expressed in the Iliad. Achilles’ confrontation with Agamemnon, for example, leads her to ponder questions about the efficacy of challenging an inept, incompetent leader. Achilles’ withdrawal from the war leads to an exploration of whether a warrior should be willing to sacrifice his life for someone else’s cause. Achilles’ return to the war after the death of Patroklos illustrates the brutal and dehumanizing impact the death of a comrade can have on a fighter.

Alexander highlights the reluctance of both sides to participate in the war. The Greeks just want to go home; the Trojans are willing to surrender Helen and her possessions in order to have them leave. But circumstances, in the form of the meddling and scheming gods who have allied themselves with one side or the other, intervene to prevent an end to a war that no one believes in and no one wants to fight. And yet the war proceeds to its inexorable conclusion.

Included in the work are over 40 pages of notes and an extensive bibliography. The breadth and depth of Alexander’s scholarship is vigorous and impressive. Her ability to make connections within the poem, to interpret details, and to zero in on subtleties and nuances that a casual reader of the epic may miss is inspiring. But perhaps one of the most impressive qualities of her work lies in its character analysis.

Agamemnon emerges as an incompetent, self-absorbed leader with an inflated ego and abysmal leadership skills. Paris emerges as frivolous fop, resented by Trojans and Greeks alike for leading them into an unpopular war. Hektor is a family man with little taste for fighting. However, it is in her analysis of the character of Achilles that Alexander shines.

Achilles emerges as a complex character plagued with internal and external conflicts. A reluctant participant in the war, his skill in warfare is unsurpassed on the battlefield. Although he expresses a longing to return home to his father, he never leaves Troy. He initially demonstrates compassion for his enemies as when, for example, we read he spared the life of Lykaon, a son of Priam, during their first encounter. But he turns into a brutal killing machine after the death of Patroklos. He is the most heroic and bravest of warriors and, yet, he gives distinctly unheroic advice to the delegation of Greeks who have come to reconcile his feud with Agamemnon. He tells them to abandon the war and sail home since a peaceful life at home is more precious than glory on the battlefield. And, finally, he rejoins the war to avenge the death of Patroklos while knowing that his choice will lead to his own death on the battlefield.

In her reflections on and interpretation of Homer’s Iliad, Caroline Alexander encourages a meditation on war—its justifications; its mutually destructive nature on all sides of the conflict; its impact on family; its brutalizing influence on those fighting in the front lines; and its interruption of the peaceful, civilizing scenes of daily life. Her reading of Homer’s Iliad strips war of its glory and grandeur and exposes its reality with unflinching honesty.

A fascinating read that provides valuable commentary on the Iliad. Highly recommended.

Distant View of a Minaret

Alifa Rifaat

Alifa Rifaat’s collection of 15 short stories in Distant View of a Minaret is a quiet, subtle, and delicately nuanced collection of mostly first-person narratives that take place in Egypt. The stories are short, but what they lose in length they more than make up for in depth and penetrating insight. Rifaat has an uncanny ability to elevate ordinary acts of daily life into the level of ritual.

With few exceptions, the first-person narratives are in the voices of women at different stages in life. For example, in "Distant View of a Minaret," we meet a married woman whose husband makes her feel ashamed for seeking sexual fulfillment. "Bahiyaa’s Eyes" is in the voice of an aging woman with failing eyesight who wants to feast her eyes on her daughter one last time before completely losing her vision. In "An Incident at the Ghobashi Household," a mother protects her daughter by pretending her daughter’s illegitimate child is her own. In "Just Another Day," peace descends upon a woman as she is invited to enter the Gardens of Paradise while her body is being prepared for burial.

The strength of these stories lies in the poignant and perceptive manner in which Rifaat handles life’s disappointments, situations, oppressions, and challenges. Several of the stories depict wives struggling to come to terms with their husbands’ prolific infidelities. Although many of the women recognize the injustice perpetrated against them, they do not rage against a patriarchal system that oppresses, discriminates, and marginalizes them. They do not seek divorce or retaliate against their husbands’ infidelities by committing adultery. Instead, they exercise an agency that manifests itself in a different form. They are practicing Muslims who derive sustenance from their Islamic faith.

What is impressive about these stories is the feminist consciousness that emerges. It is not a Western style feminism. Instead, the women operate within the precepts of their Islamic faith. Their stories are punctuated by the muezzin’s call to prayer. As each woman makes her prostrations in prayer, a peace and calmness descends upon her, enabling her to better handle life’s challenges and accept her fate with poise and equanimity. Her thoughts are peppered with references to God and His mercy. In “The Kite," for example, a poor, uneducated widow who followed her husband's lead in prayer because she never learned to memorize verses from the Qur’an finds herself unable to perform prayers after his death. But she does what she can. She remembers to thank God for His generosity by performing the simple and tender gesture of raising her hand to her lips repeatedly to give thanks.

Through her depiction of women as conscious agents who find refuge in their faith, Rifaat quietly exposes the double standard and systemic injustices characteristic of a patriarchal society. Eastern and/or Islamic feminists demand justice but seek it on their own terms. Their methods may be more effective than strident rebellion, which can be alienating. Many non-Western women resent the paternalistic attitude of some Western feminists who seek to impose their world-view and methodology for addressing injustice while simultaneously discrediting the world view of feminists from Eastern and/or Islamic countries.

Alifa Rifaat exposes injustice with subtlety, sensitivity, and poignancy. She shows us how some women of the Islamic faith confront injustice. We don’t have to agree with their methods of coping with challenges, but we should at a minimum respect the right of all women to exercise agency by choosing their own paths for dealing with oppression.

Highly recommended.